January 28 (RIA Novosti) - Toilet paper has become a hot commodity at one Pennsylvania high school after vandalism forced school officials to remove bathroom tissue from the boys’ bathrooms and have all male students sign toilet paper in and out.
“We’ve had serious destruction to our bathrooms for the past two years,” Thomas Smith, principal of Mahanoy Area High School, told the Republican-Herald newspaper about the damage that triggered the new tissue policy.
“We have a case pending with the police where a bathroom down by our gymnasium was absolutely destroyed,” Smith said, adding that toilet paper and books were being flushed down the toilets to intentionally clog them.
If male students need to use toilet paper, they must go to the school’s main office to sign it out and then are required to bring it back and sign it back in.
The policy has “cut down on the destruction,” as well as “randomly” patrolling the bathrooms to “check if anything is going on,” Smith told the Republican-Herald.
The Republican-Herald also reported that some parents are unhappy and protesting the policy, since some students are too embarrassed to walk down to the office to request toilet paper and are going home sick instead.
Smith said he was unaware that students were leaving school instead of requesting toilet paper and that he is “willing to put the toilet paper back, but if the bathroom is destroyed, it will be removed,” the Republican-Herald reported.
